I think we've all seen what can happen when Marek gets involved again after so long out of the loop. Weird, capricious changes that no one asked for. The fact that he was blamed for the welder change even though he had nothing to do with it shows that there is a bad history there. He's moved on, or at least he should. What he REALLY needs to do is what he claimed he was going to do in one of his blogs...put someone else in charge of SE. Is there anyone in charge of SE right now? Because I sure don't know.

You need only look at @Deepflame over at ME to see how incredibly awesome development could be in the right hands. It's not just that ME is becoming a GAME, and that it has a clear direction and development plan (one week bug fixes, one week small update, all working towards larger update), but Tim has spent some serious time responding to the forums. Good answers. He acknowledges the issues and addresses them. Bless him for that.

All SE needs is for one person to be in charge of identifying the greatest issues and then communicating to us that they are actually AWARE of them and that they are resolving them at the exclusion of all else. I think SE has too long worked on the premise of "teaser's and unexpectedly cool reveals at patchmas". While I've LOVED that...the last 3 Thursdays have made a mockery of that with their new "features" while incredible bugs persist. I'm ready to grow up past expecting new features in exchange for getting solid permanent fixes to issues.

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To sum up the recent patches. It is the near literal equivalent of polishing a turd. Lens flair? While the game is in its current state? I understand that its cool-ish and probably easy to implement but as ive been saying for close to 2 years now. The game needs TO WORK first. And i mean work well. It needs to be playable. It needs to have a game. Otherwise they MUST rebrand it and re-market it as a 3D ship builder/editor with sandbox testing abilities. But not a full game. Because right now it isnt and with the lack of direction it seems that it never will be.

Marek and i are both happier with him far, far away from the game as possible. He just wants to diddle with AI and i don't want him to scratch my corneas. I call that a compromize we can all live with.
Now, whoever's currently in charge of making decisions.... THAT person needs a playsession or ten. Also the entirety of the art department needs mandatory playtime for the remainder of the block redesign.

Yeah, the love is there. You want to be nice to your game and it's devs but every now and then you gotta get loud, grab them by the ears and tell them "No.", and then stick their noses into Lense Flares so that they understand what they've done.

it's usually someone with little to no experience in game design and who is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY disconnected from reality in terms of how the game should be developed. The leadership consistently ignores advice and suggestions from within Keen from people who actually play the game and from the good folks who actually spend time interacting with the community. There's a huge push from the leadership (probably via Marek who clearly wants to blow this thing and go home) to develop shiny objects to get the game looking AAA, and while the programmers and testers are telling them what the game needs and the community is screaming about, resources get BLATANTLY allocated from these things to unasked for features.

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I don't know if you're telling the truth, and i won't speculate on that, but the above quote has been pretty much my impression for a while now, except my impression includes Marek, who managed to crash a stationary fighter jet.

Nobody ↑ :

A perfect example of this is the campaign. Now, I love the campaign and I think it's brilliant and the level designers at Keen are doing a great thing for the game by showing people the things you can do. But there's not a single person in the community who asked for a single player scripted experience.

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I do have to disagree with that one, though, not because i think a Campaign was the most urgently needed feature for the game (then again they're presumably paying Keen Softwarehouse Level Designer Aragath for SOMETHING so you might as well have Aragath design levels for Keen Softwarehouse) but because it's factually untrue. Campaigns and quests and crap have been asked for a long, long time, mostly because there's fuckall to do in Survival. The Campaign was a good idea and well done... unfortunately it was supposed to be a tutorial and it kinda lacks in that department.

I keep pointing back to Kerbal Space Program, however. THAT is a game about engineering solutions to solve problems. There isn't even really any "survival" aspects to the game. There are no enemies, there is no life support to maintain, no environmental dangers. But what there IS is plenty of serious challenges that it takes trial-and-error and thought and design and time to overcome. And when you DO overcome them...I've never felt such a sense of satisfaction from a game.

KSP thrives on the "because it's there" challenge. Lots of planets and moons to try and get to, and then to try and land on, and then to try and return from, and THEN to do all of that with people on board, and then lots of people, etc. There are forum posts devoted to fun and highly varied challenges that anyone can participate in (Get to the Mun without using liquid fuel, take 20 people around the planet without refueling, etc etc). Essentially unlimited things to do just for the sake of seeing if you can do it.

Otherwise they MUST rebrand it and re-market it as a 3D ship builder/editor with sandbox testing abilities.

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Now this is the juicy part: as far as i'm concerned, that's pretty much what SE is. No rebranding required. But even that doesn't always work because of the way Survival and Multiplayer have become more and more dominant. How i wish for some Mirror Mode improvements... a Creative Mode Tutorial... missing Ramp pieces... but no i get Lense Flares.

I do have to disagree with that one, though, not because i think a Campaign was the most urgently needed feature for the game (then again they're presumably paying Keen Softwarehouse Level Designer Aragath for SOMETHING so you might as well have Aragath design levels for Keen Softwarehouse) but because it's factually untrue. Campaigns and quests and crap have been asked for a long, long time, mostly because there's fuckall to do in Survival. The Campaign was a good idea and well done... unfortunately it was supposed to be a tutorial and it kinda lacks in that department.

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I remember people asking for tutorials and for procedural activities within survival worlds, and even a few people asking for more scenarios from the developer. I don't remember a huge outcry (or any) for a curated first person story mode, which, as you said, is what we got instead. There's been much discussion over how little the campaign does to actually teach you how to play the game, despite its cool-ness.

My point is that the campaign was a huge centerpiece of the pre-beta work being done at Keen and occupied an inordinate amount of human resources outside of Aragath. It's nice but it's also obvious that the leadership has absolutely no idea what needs to be prioritized, much less communicate about it.

Marek and i are both happier with him far, far away from the game as possible. He just wants to diddle with AI and i don't want him to scratch my corneas. I call that a compromize we can all live with.
Now, whoever's currently in charge of making decisions.... THAT person needs a playsession or ten. Also the entirety of the art department needs mandatory playtime for the remainder of the block redesign.

I think we've all seen what can happen when Marek gets involved again after so long out of the loop. Weird, capricious changes that no one asked for. The fact that he was blamed for the welder change even though he had nothing to do with it shows that there is a bad history there. He's moved on, or at least he should. What he REALLY needs to do is what he claimed he was going to do in one of his blogs...put someone else in charge of SE. Is there anyone in charge of SE right now? Because I sure don't know.

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I stand corrected. After reading these, I think you're both right. But someone needs to get their hands dirty with this game and exerience it for all it is now and think like we do about all it could be.

Yeah, the love is there. You want to be nice to your game and it's devs but every now and then you gotta get loud, grab them by the ears and tell them "No.", and then stick their noses into Lense Flares so that they understand what they've done.

Intetesting, so many people feeling down. We do know whats the road ahead, its been said in bits several times. Now the game is being put up into shape while pretty much being big feature locked. Rewriting of renderer, effects , never ending MP etc. All complex stuff. After the big stuff is done (and all things it had to break is broken) then SE can be finally be fixed as much as they will possible do. Have a bit more patience.

I stopped playing because bugs killing any complex design, and mainly never finished anything big because I felt there was no real need for it. Yet I still have the itch to play but Im not playing. I have 387 hours in SE, half of that is working in a single very big ship back when there were no ship mounted welders.
Im dissapointed with the game since the infamous roadmap of last year, but in not burned out. I cant get to feel how it would be to have 1500 or 2000 hours, you guys burned the game too much while still being unreleased.

I didn't burn out on the game. I have over 5000 hours logged; if I was going to burn out, it would have happened long ago. I've got close to 10 ships that I want to finish and release, that I can't finish because of bugs that Keen introduced months ago and still hasn't fixed. It's simply reached the point where Keen has made it clear they're not interested in fixing the parts of the game that need to be fixed.

I can tolerate broken things for a very long time if I think they're going to be fixed, but if they're not, I'm not going to be a masochist. I'm going to stop producing content for SE because I can't produce the stuff I want to make anymore.

I've got close to 4k hours in the game. If you do the math, I've got more than my money's worth from it. and I'm happy for that. It is the closest thing in my adult life that has given me that peace of mind zen state I would enter when I was elbow deep in my giant box of Legos as a kid. I would have paid much more.
However having said that we have always known, years ago talking about why pistons didn't work... then still dont work now. We All knew then, the players knew. so I Know keen knew, the game engine, simply will never get the game, where it deserves to be. I thought ... hoped, that keen would ditch the engine and start over with something that can actually handle the physics and multi player. I predicted that would happen before beta.. well. Maybe it will happen before 2.0. Doubt it, it would cost too much. But if they decided to start from scratch. With the statement they were going to Stop developing SE, began another game with an engine more suited for what SE is.... Id buy it again.

But if they decided to start from scratch. With the statement they were going to Stop developing SE, began another game with an engine more suited for what SE is.... Id buy it again.

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I feel like this is what should have happened when they did that AMA like 2 and some change years ago. They said that the game had already become more of a hit than anyone anticipated. Sometime after that, work on DX11 began and infinite worlds were born. That's when I remember this being talked about first; how Havok would never be what the game needed it to be, and how the game would be forever limited by it. If at that point they had said "Look guys, we are going bigger with this game than we ever thought we would, and we need to start over to achieve the scope we are now envisioning." I think they would have a pretty positive reception to their decision. Instead, they started Medieval Engineers.

If they were to say that now, I would personally be on the fence, but would more than likely go for it since it would be keeping the dream of SE alive. I don't think many others would be as optimistic though.

I keep pointing back to Kerbal Space Program, however. THAT is a game about engineering solutions to solve problems. There isn't even really any "survival" aspects to the game. There are no enemies, there is no life support to maintain, no environmental dangers. But what there IS is plenty of serious challenges that it takes trial-and-error and thought and design and time to overcome. And when you DO overcome them...I've never felt such a sense of satisfaction from a game.

KSP thrives on the "because it's there" challenge. Lots of planets and moons to try and get to, and then to try and land on, and then to try and return from, and THEN to do all of that with people on board, and then lots of people, etc. There are forum posts devoted to fun and highly varied challenges that anyone can participate in (Get to the Mun without using liquid fuel, take 20 people around the planet without refueling, etc etc). Essentially unlimited things to do just for the sake of seeing if you can do it.

I wish SE had more of that.

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...and so THAT'S why Keen needs to take a step back and starting thinking about the game from the standpoint of those who mod, create gameworlds, and script. Every day I open the workshop in hopes of seeing something cool, wonderful, and game changing. 95% of the stuff I don't even add because I'll never use it. But there are some really well thought out workshop items that really shine. But it feels we're over the hill as far as people wanting to do this? Why? Because Keen basically said "go f' yourself" to almost anyone who was attempting to do this. We'd rather smear crap on the window blocks and call THAT progress.

People WILL make all the content you describe and more. But there's f' all in documentation on how to do this and there's f' all in documentation regarding any changes that they've made other than a random group of changes alluded to in the change log. Why? If all changes result from assignments, those assignments are completed, then why aren't they published as being changed?

In another thread there was a discussion about documentation and some programmer noses got bent out of joint about "that's extra work." I've worked in an environment where technical writers (is there one on staff at Keen?) were BEGGING for information so they could write instruction manuals. It never happened because there were bigger and better things to worry about. The company tanked. The product tanked. No one knew how to use it... the employees barely did. The software? It was ALL about content creation. Go figure.

Writing out better documentation would even strengthen the game as the obvious but not so obvious shortcomings and overlooked bugs would have to be addressed.

But alas. Currently when I compile a script I get errors/warnings. But seems that the compiler and the code aren't on the same page when it comes to Stable.

Speaking of stable. WTF? That worked out well, now didn't it? It's basically the hand-me-down bugged version. See a new bug in the development version? Well, surprise, you'll be getting that too in the stable version. Kind of defeats the idea of stable now doesn't it?

Okay, this thread is kind of cathartic as we can just vent our frustrations. But Keen. We love your game. We just don't like what you're currently doing with it and the leadership(?) that's driving it.

I think I'll check out what Deepflame is doing with ME. If he's setting a great example then that's what's needed over in SE. We probably can't steal him, but maybe he could vet the next person to lead SE?

I stopped playing because bugs killing any complex design, and mainly never finished anything big because I felt there was no real need for it. Yet I still have the itch to play but Im not playing. I have 387 hours in SE

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That pretty much sums up my experience. It's a cycle of inspiration > prototyping > disappointment. I end up compromising on my ideas so it doesn't explode, or fall apart, or start shaking violently, or blast off into space on it's own, or fall through the planet, or roll a ball of 350k ice through the walls of my base. The difference for me is I'm about to tick over 1600 hours in this game, I'm on my third burnout. Other players have a lot more hours than that, and unfortunately a lot of them have left killer mods behind to die. I lost interest in finishing my PVE mod because the AI is just terrible ATM. What's ironic about that, is it's owner runs another company called GoodAI. Where it be? I had three options when tinkering with AI, does it come straight at you and ram you, or flounder about trying to avoid hitting you in such an awkward manner as to render it's own weapons useless, or try to run and pretend you're not there.

The thing about a modding community is that it can make your sales explode like you never thought possible. Counter-strike started as a mod. Dayz was a mod. Look what they've done for Valve and Bohemia. The downside is that without a community it all goes away. Players begin to get frustrated that their favorite mods are no longer supported. They end up losing interest, especially if some of those mods deal with correcting mistakes in development. Why is it so hard to imagine that we want glass we can actually see through? The fact that I have to get a mod to correct this, and the new lens flares, and the camera, is part of the problem. I mean seriously - I don't mind scratched up paint, or worn looking parts, but glass has one job... One Job! Cameras have one job...and it's not to obscure vision. Hello? Even NASCAR has better cameras than us. Welders have one job!

That's another thing that drives me nuts. The nerf on welders to curb PMWs. Why? I looked at stats the other night during primetime. Less than 150 people were playing MP, the other 4800 were in co-op or single. ALL 5000 were irritated about welders. There is a major problem with balancing a game for MP. Empyrion did something similar. People in single player found they couldn't build a mining base because it was too close to their main base (an anti-griefing MP measure). They recently fixed it, but seriously WTF? I have nothing against MP, it used to be all I played, because I wanted the rush of PVP. I wasted 7 years of my life killin and getting killed on Ultima Online. I could not care less about PVP these days (moverit) and I finally see what people were yelling at me for years. MP is a constant, yes, never-ending balance nightmare, and if it's the same branch as SP/co-op guess who suffers? Well really, we all do, whether we admit it or not, but the co-op/SP guys never ask for/or want crap like this. If we did, we'd be playing some MMO saying "Why yes! By all means, please do nerf my character because someone thinks it's OP, for I strongly care about the balance! Thank you sir, and here's another 15 bucks".

I didn't burn out on the game. I have over 5000 hours logged; if I was going to burn out, it would have happened long ago. I've got close to 10 ships that I want to finish and release, that I can't finish because of bugs that Keen introduced months ago and still hasn't fixed. It's simply reached the point where Keen has made it clear they're not interested in fixing the parts of the game that need to be fixed.

I can tolerate broken things for a very long time if I think they're going to be fixed, but if they're not, I'm not going to be a masochist. I'm going to stop producing content for SE because I can't produce the stuff I want to make anymore.

I didn't burn out. Space Engineers burned out.

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I have 4385 hours logged. Lots of server building (not just running an out-of-the-box generic server), design, a decent amount of amateur coding. I'm always looking for ways to change the game and challenge players in a balanced way.

But people just aren't that interested. You start a server, a new set of bugs drags it straight down to hell, people leave... and no one plays anymore. Currently, people are quitting in droves now that their stuff will just phase through a planet and completely explode the creation and everything anywhere near it. All that time and there stuff gets randomly destroyed by Klang and... rage quit.

Usually, a complaint thread evolves to a rage-quit thread, and then derails into a massive flamewar before being locked by a Moderator. But this one... It's different. It's made by a core community member, and involves serious issues addressed by many other players. Not that novice members' complaints are less important, but here we all agree that the game needs some real direction. Seasoned players are well aware of EA's risks, but this lack of functionality has gone too far IMHO.

My feeling for SE now is that KSH lost its scope. They put a lot of time and effort to fulfill a community demand which wasn't part of the original project, accepted the risk, and due to this had to deal with many obstacles (workforce shortage, need for a bigger infrastrucutre etc.). Currently, it seems that whoever is leading the team doesn't have a clue about where to reach.

The one point I have to disagree with what people are saying here is on planets. Saying that planets contributed to the problem implies that the problem was primarily one of resources, and it wasn't. There are things that are causing player dropoff now, that we told Keen years ago they would need to address before leaving alpha.

They didn't listen. They didn't address them.

The problem wasn't lacking the resources to address the issues. The problem was refusing to consider the issues as such in the first place. And that's why my tone has done a near-complete 180 since they switched to alpha. Because there are things that were OK in an alpha build that are not OK in a beta build.

The one point I have to disagree with what people are saying here is on planets. Saying that planets contributed to the problem implies that the problem was primarily one of resources, and it wasn't. There are things that are causing player dropoff now, that we told Keen years ago they would need to address before leaving alpha.

They didn't listen. They didn't address them.

The problem wasn't lacking the resources to address the issues. The problem was refusing to consider the issues as such in the first place. And that's why my tone has done a near-complete 180 since they switched to alpha. Because there are things that were OK in an alpha build that are not OK in a beta build.

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I find it a bit annoying that SE suddenly got a "beta" label stamped on it. It felt a bit like changing the expiration date on a packet of donuts and calling them fresh again.

They also rolled out the "deluxe" version of the game which contains artwork and uncompressed sound track files. I can upgrade to looking at the pictures and playing a version from 2013 for $10.00.

In all honesty, I'd just GIVE Keen $20-$30 to change/find some leadership and finish the game. It makes me wonder who in the SE team is still there from day one? Who still has the passion for the game or do we have people who just showed up for a job? There's nothing wrong with being a hired hand with no vested interest in the game. It's very respectable. But then there are the key people who have a passion, vision, and carry a machete in one hand and a laptop in the other. You need those people and they need to have enough power drive the game forward... not sitting around in meetings waiting for permission to change a line of code and "undirty" glass.

But that's it. This refrain about dirty glass. It's not the glass. It's that there was no one on the team that had the power to say "NO" to someone who was no longer on the team. In all honesty, I bet Marek couldn't have given a shit one way or the other about the glass texture. He makes a suggestion and someone takes it as gospel and is a little too afraid to challenge the idea. Bosses can be scary. But if you can't question the person you answer directly to, then you don't have a good working relationship... especially if you know that they are wrong.

A visionary needs to step in and take OWNERSHIP of this block... um... game, fall in love with it, and then see it to its potential. Yeah, you'd get my money... again... now shut up and take it (my money).

SE is for the most part a very demanding community.
Here is my observations -
1: Bug fixing. They did a bug fixing period ( the reason for the dev/stable build split) they had angry millenials on forums demanding "shiny" new features each week - and modders angry at splitting into two versions.
2: Ok, pander to the snowflakes, start throwing in some new features between bug fixes... now they get angry forum posts about people demanding bug fixes.
3: Ok focus on bugs and new features in dev, and only release the most positive features to stable. Now they get angry forum messages about broken mods, snowflakes angry because not enough 4k shinies, gen-y's angry at slow bug fixes, gen-x's angry at modding changes... and too many shinies..

The point here is you cannot please everyone. A software company could try to do everything right, and there will always be that one angry person louder than all the happy people.

Perhaps we are spoilt, early on the community worked well, it was a new game, people suggested ideas, and directions for the game to go, and the programmers listened and delivered for us. The community was very supportive and positive.

The result was keen set the benchmark for a new space genre, and they set it high. Never underestimate the power of a postive work environment.

The trouble is now there is too many conflicting viewpoints - and the negative ones are the most vocal, so the postive ones have given up in disgust at not being heard.

Having worked in a software company help desk; (not with keen) frankly it sucks. You only ever hear from the people angry at you. There is little or no positive feedback when stuff works, but clients will stress helpdesk staff to the point they quit, get fired or commit suicide if it goes wrong. Keen has no helpdesk, your feedback goes directly to the programmers. There is no filter there. When most of that feedback is negative, that gets to them. It got to me at that helpdesk. That's why i dont work there now. They won't always reply - there is too many to answer- but they see much of it.

The irony is its always the same stuff. Performance, Pistons, PBs, Rotors, Lag. They already know. Unless you can add new info, logs, videos, screenshots, codesnippets from their github to suggest improvements; then stop. It is not helping.

Also it is likely these guys are in teams working on entirely different things. The person working bugs wont be the same one doing missions, server code, or new graphics. They just spent months collaborating on an entire singleplayer system, complete with a visual scripting environment; backed up by an entire single player mission campaign; story, an overhaul of MODAPI flexibility and updated graphics to boot. These guys had nothing to do with the bugs. Yet the community still nailed them to the wall.

Show some love people. Programming isn't easy - and its easy to burn out. Don't feed the troll. Feed the art.

The problem wasn't lacking the resources to address the issues. The problem was refusing to consider the issues as such in the first place. And that's why my tone has done a near-complete 180 since they switched to alpha. Because there are things that were OK in an alpha build that are not OK in a beta build.

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If the graphics guy they had on the birthday (?) stream is any indication then the non-community-interactive devs and decision makers have a "i know best, ignore the players"-attitude. And that's how you get Lense Flares. Correction, that's how you get THESE Lense Flares.

I finally figured out what BETA stands for as it relates to Space Engineers

B - Broken
E - Every week a new problem
T - Time it takes for KSH to fix things is ridiculous
A - Again & again we see the same (expletive deleted) problem week after week.

I'm was all for giving the Dev's time to fix things, but we had some of the same bugs and problem for Years! At some point you have to ask yourself is it worth putting you time into this game? If someone asked me six months ago I'd have said yes, but now, I'd be hard pressed to recommend this game to anyone. And if KSH were ever to release another game down the line, given how the development of this one has gone, I'd pass.

And all this is coming from a guy that has 3993 Hours of play, and over 120 creations on the workshop.

My 2 cents on the actual SE development.
2500h played here, all my best friend's found in this game posted here everything I totally agree with.

I really don't know what is the KSH point of view of what SE will be, but what I know is based on facts.

Bugs that are not fixed by weeks related on some crucial dynamics of the game itself or worse things fixed that break after a month and takes months to get fixed again. This is unprofessional.

Who is leading SE now, demonstrated over time that it's own priority was not to fix crucial bugs. And this is enough for me to try another game with the same guys that made great this game with their workshop creations.

Nobody mentioned here that what made great this game was the workshop, probably the most popular of any EA game of Steam. The most skilled programmers, modders, ship builders embraced this mess called SE and squeezed it's best from this sandbox.

If many of them are leaving probably is because nothing has changed since planets kicked in.

KSH SE leader actually should be fired in my opinion, but I'm just a customer of a 20 bucks EA game. And this means nothing.

I haven't been on the forums regularly for sometime and I just popped in to see how its all going and this is the top thread I find

I'm not going to say anything that hasn't already been said so prepare for repeats. This game is many different things to different people. Some asked for a campaign, most asked for planets, some asked for a ship builder, some want a story, all want it working perfectly and the way they THINK it should. No two people think the same way. How can a group of people please everyone. You could argue I am being optomistic here because Space Engineers works the way I want it to work. You'd be wrong, as I know it doesn't always work the way I want it to. We have 1000 new workshop items EVERY week, updates every week and here you all are condeming something that isn't finished to the depths of hell BECAUSE it isn't finished. Let that sink in for a minute. Leave the judgements till it is finished, then you can say I told you so in a big chorus if it goes tits up. Until then, take a break, play some other games and keep up with what the updates bring. You haven't played broken till you've played/pledged Star Citizen.

THEN 2014;

My first screenshot

NOW 2017;

My current survival SP/MP game

FOR THE SHIP BUILDERS!

Much improvement on my very first SE build
FOR THE STORY MAKERS AND WANTERS!

Coming up with ideas for server rules via TS while filming a few years back hence the skins, think this chap was Richards
FOR THE PEOPLE WHO F*** AROUND!

God dammit Knex!
FOR FRIENDSHIP AND THOSE TIMES YOU HAD TO HELP A FELLOW ENGINEER!

The early days of Frontier Industries and Valtare

Members on our server wanted something different to do so we setup a dogfight map with some fighters and an aircraft carrier. I have never laughed so much in my entire life. Competition was setup to find the best looking fighter before we began. I eh...helped out a fellow member when he wasnt looking.

Another milestone on a friends map

Working out how we could all work on Knex's new ship design and still have it moving around the hangar. We ended up cutting it into sections and moving them around like a real workshop.

People that know me on here KNOW that I have thrown in the towel on several occasions but I have rested, come back and still enjoyed this game. I KNOW there a people more dedicated to this game than me, I know that it can be really tough as each week stuff changes that inhibits you from building. Don't let some rotors and pistons get the better of you. If you can't handle virtual objects not working the way you want them to then good luck in real life with other humans.

These screenshots are just a quick sample of my three years in this game. 1000+ pictures of bug reports, issues, laughter, sillyness, serious RP, rage quits, scale builds, servers. There is no other game I have played where I have found numerous friends as much as this one.

Nailed it. I have 80+ workshop submissions. If SE worked properly I'd build another 80, no shit. It's never a lack of ideas that has stopped me building, never. It's the poor performance and implementation of SE.

You are trolling right? Don't act like this is the petulant whining of children. This is genuine concern for a game we have all invested significant time into. Check out the names of people with concerns in this thread, they aren't <100hrs players pissed off they can't run SE on their mum's potato. These are some of the most prolific content creators this game has.

We have been extremely patient, some of us have played this game for over three years. Sooner or later, there has to be real, tangible progress.

If Keen want to call their game a BETA, the game should function like a BETA, not like an ALPHA.

First of all, no disrespect intended, your Babylon 5 builds are epic. But I feel you might be falling foul of what I said in my OP: You love the idea of SE. So do I, I think we all do. But after three years of development, the reality in-game is not even close to what many of us expect and the optimism is no longer there. @High Ground pretty much nailed it with this:

Nobody ↑ :

I'm was all for giving the Dev's time to fix things, but we had some of the same bugs and problem for Years! At some point you have to ask yourself is it worth putting you time into this game? If someone asked me six months ago I'd have said yes, but now, I'd be hard pressed to recommend this game to anyone. And if KSH were ever to release another game down the line, given how the development of this one has gone, I'd pass.

First of all, no disrespect intended, your Babylon 5 builds are epic. But I feel you might be falling foul of what I said in my OP: You love the idea of SE. So do I, I think we all do. But after three years of development, the reality in-game is not even close to what many of us expect and the optimism is no longer there. @High Ground pretty much nailed it with this:

I'm was all for giving the Dev's time to fix things, but we had some of the same bugs and problem for Years! At some point you have to ask yourself is it worth putting you time into this game? If someone asked me six months ago I'd have said yes, but now, I'd be hard pressed to recommend this game to anyone. And if KSH were ever to release another game down the line, given how the development of this one has gone, I'd pass.

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None taken bud, in some ways yes and you are right, we do all love the idea of SE. Do you think we should reduce our expectations? Have we all maybe been too optomistic in those early days? I think more people understand more about how SE works and that has put a bit of a downer on the game. Like a magician showing you how he does the trick after he's done it. Kind of loses its pazaz. I can respect the fact that you have lost optimism surrounding SE because I respect the work you have done on the workshop and in game it's just I don't share that view. My post was more a rally call to make people think about it. You have and I respect that

And you are right, "the bad news is nothing lasts forever, but the good news is nothing lasts forever"

You are trolling right? Don't act like this is the petulant whining of children. This is genuine concern for a game we have all invested significant time into. Check out the names of people with concerns in this thread, they aren't <100hrs players pissed off they can't run SE on their mum's potato. These are some of the most prolific content creators this game has.

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1300 hours here. 30+ SOLID ships on workshop since 2014.
Not the biggest name around, but definitely a card carrying member here.

Not the biggest name around, but definitely a card carrying member here.

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Same here. 1600+ hours and counting. I'm not that much pissed off with SE because I stopped playing Survival after the Faction update, which created a major bug/mayhem for players that used Turrets and corrupted my 200h Survival world. After that, I switched to Creative and never looked back.

Only setbacks I had since then were many core blocks that came after (Battery, Camera, Timer, Programmable Block, Projector etc.) and forced some redesign, and the Oxygen Update (1.074), which was a real gamechanger in terms of design (most of my ships were redone from scratch).

After update 1.096, which introduced a feature freeze, design was more feasible due to lack of changing (Reactor/Thruster balancing happened, but since I always made my ships with surplus power, it wasn't much of a setback), although I always avoided controversial blocks like Rotor/Piston and Merge Blocks (some of my designs use Landing Gears, but usually 0-1).

But... I want to play Survival. All of my designs are made with a Survival mindset (Battery / Reactor interaction, Oxygen / Hydrogen infrastructure, full conveyoring with Connector, Cameras, Remote Control, Antenna/Beacon, cargo scripts, enough cargo space etc.), but it's useless if Survival is riddled with bugs, some of them long living.

As of today... I'm still waiting. But I don't know for how long I will (or must).

Some of you will know me and some of you won't, I'm a long time lurker of the forums (Only just got around to verifying my account!)

I have 1300hrs in SE with a roughly 50/50 split between survival, creative and MP I also have 8 years and counting first hand knowledge of the games industry. Here's the thing, SE was a hit that KEEN did not expect, it hit a chord with users who at the time were starved of a "Grown up" version of minecraft that gave us a unique opportunity to go wild with engineering in space.

We all jumped on the early game with huge optimism for the future and how Keen would redeem themselves on the mistakes of MWs. Even when KEEN made the in my mind bad call of starting a second title Medieval Engineers I still went out and immediately bought it, not because I wanted to play it but because I wanted to support KEEN in the dream of making SE into something finished and complete.

And therein lies the issue, at this point we now all have that nagging voice in the back of our mind that KEEN will never make SE into the finished polished product we all hoped they would. It all stems down to one thing, KEEN never had a final plan for how they would get out of finishing SE, they just don't know how to finish it, from day 1 when it became a massive hit they have feature creeped purely based on player feedback without their own core direction. They simply have no clear plan on how to make some key features work or how to move the title from Alpha --> Beta --> Release.

To round off the argument though, we need to stop treating SE as an MMO game, if KEEN have made all the money they will ever make with SE due to us all rushing to buy it early, then they have no financial reason (Beyond the maybe it will effect future title sales) to actually have more than a token dev team focus on SE.

Thus lies the issue with EA titles, once they have made their peak financial return you have no incentive to continue developing the title with the same level of commitment you did before you reached that point. Regardless of what Marek lied about, SE's dev team absolutely was split when ME was in development, just like he did redirect funds from Keen into GoodAI (As mentioned already it's a joke they want to make "GoodAI" when they arguably have some of the worst AI).

To end what became an essay which I apologize for! I think it's time we all come to terms with the downwards spiral of SE to an early unpolished final release. Hopefully then we won't be too disheartened with its final quality on that day.

I only have about 500 hours in this game, which makes me something of a noob in present company, but I can agree with the OP's words - all of them.

But I would add that the game was sold as Alpha (now beta) and if you pin very high hopes (and large wads of cash) on a game at this development stage you'd better be ready for some emotional hurt. SE isn't the only game falling short in the Alpha department, most of them do (the only exception I can think of is Factorio). Its is the nature of PC indie games today to be somewhat "Of the Fringe".

Thats our jungle dude, welcome to it.
But we really do have fun and games, at least some of the time ;-)